Introduction to R and SQL Server

SQL Server 2016 came with great new features, and among them was R integration into SQL Server, partly with advanced analytics and partly with new programmability capabilities. Microsoft R Services for SQL Server is part of the family of new extensibilities for highly scalable and parallel advanced analytics. R Services allows you to perform advanced analytics (statistical, multivariate statistics, predictive analytics, machine learning, and deep learning) on large quantities of data stored in the database. Microsoft published R Services as part of Microsoft R Server (MRS), which was specially designed for reading data directly from the SQL Server database within the same SQL Server computational context.

We will cover the following aspects in this chapter:

• Using R prior to SQL Server 2016
• Microsoft's commitment on open source R language
• Boosting analytics with SQL Server R integration
• Outline of the book